NorthShore, Mayo Clinic in multiyear pact

The multiyear agreement will give NorthShore physicians fast access to Mayo specialists and research targeting three areas of care: cardiovascular, cancer and neurological cases

September 19, 2012|By Peter Frost, Chicago Tribune reporter

 Dr. David Hayes, second from left, of the Mayo Clinic Care Network, gets a tour of a NorthShore hospital lab Tuesday. (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune)

The power of a brand name plays an outsized role in how consumers choose to spend their money. That notion is taking hold in medicine, with one of the most famous names in the hospital business expanding to the Chicago area.

Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic plans to announce an affiliation Wednesday with NorthShore University HealthSystem, which operates four hospitals in the northern suburbs.

The multiyear agreement, scheduled to begin Oct. 1, will give NorthShore physicians fast access to Mayo specialists and research targeting three areas of care: cardiovascular, cancer and neurological cases.

NorthShore, a nonprofit that owns hospitals in Evanston, Glenview, Skokie and Highland Park, said the partnership will allow it to better treat existing patients, expand its patient base and enhance its expertise in complex cases.

The affiliation also allows for the system to expedite patient appointments at the Mayo Clinic, known worldwide for its treatment of presidents, foreign heads of state and royalty.

In exchange, NorthShore will pay Mayo an undisclosedannual fee and serve as the hospital system's platform to extend its powerful brand into the nation's third-largest city, which already sends about 5,000 patients to Rochester each year.

"We have a long, long history of caring for patients in the Chicago metro area, and it is important for us to have a strong presence there and to be relevant to the physicians … and people of Chicago," said Dr. John Noseworthy, president and chief executive of the Mayo Clinic.

Noseworthy called the Chicago connection a "critical" step for Mayo, which like other national providers has accelerated efforts to broaden its reach amid vast changes in how health care is administered.

NorthShore represents the ninth such affiliation for Mayo, which joins two other nationally known medical centers — Cleveland Clinic and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston — that have forged partnerships in Chicago in recent years.

"Chicago, by all means, is an attractive, high-profile market," said Paul Keckley executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, the health care research arm of Deloitte LLP. "No one that would look at this would see anything other than it being a strategic play."

The relationship could give NorthShore a leg up in the mania of consolidation that's playing out ahead of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the landmark 2010 health law.

The law, a majority of which will be implemented in 2014, is fueling a massive shift toward a model where physician teams are paid to care for groups of patients.

Large systems like Mayo that rely on referrals from across the country are "concerned they will be left out on such arrangements, so they need to expand relationships as quickly as they can without needing to own providers in key markets," said Daniel Zismer, director of the master in health care administration program at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Another corollary is that health insurers, at the behest of large employers, are developing so-called narrow network plans that offer less-expensive insurance premiums in exchange for excluding certain hospitals and providers.

By partnering with hospital systems in certain markets, both the national system and the local system have a better chance of being included in those plans, Keckley said.

With the Mayo collaboration, "We're taking (expertise) out of Minnesota and making it more accessible to this region," said Mark Neaman, NorthShore's president and chief executive. "It's a new, transformational opportunity, in our judgment, to really deal with complex cases in a new way."

The vast majority of patients who will benefit from the partnership are those with especially difficult or unique cases. NorthShore physicians will be able to tap Mayo's subspecialists and researchers via electronic consultations, video conferencing and medical record transfers.

The goal is to be able to treat patients at NorthShore hospitals, though some extreme cases will be referred to Mayo. The agreement does not affect NorthShore's affiliation with University of Chicago Medicine.

NorthShore patients whose cases are reviewed by medical teams that include Mayo physicians will not be required to pay additional money, officials said.

The agreement builds on a standing relationship between the two providers. Since April 2011, the two systems have teamed to care for more than 100 patients.

The first such affiliation in the Chicago metro area was signed in 2010 between Cleveland Clinic and Central DuPage Hospital, which is now part of Cadence Health.